Former NSA security chief-turned-whistleblower says plan for bulk collection of communications data is ‘99% useless’ [...] The “snooper’s charter” legislation extending the mass surveillance powers of the intelligence agencies will “cost lives in Britain”, a former US security chief has warned MPs and peers. [...]

Government requests for account data globally jumped 18% in the first half of 2015 to 41,214 accounts, up from 35,051 requests in the second half of 2014, Facebook said in a blogpost. [...]

Most government requests related to criminal cases, such as robberies or kidnappings, Facebook said. The government often requested basic subscriber information, IP addresses or account content, including people’s posts online. [...]

French authorities are calling for EU-wide rules requiring travelling EU nationals to give their fingerprints and possibly also have their faces scanned.
The proposal, which is part of a much larger digital dragnet known as the ‘smart borders’ package, was discussed at an EU interior ministers meeting in Luxembourg on Thursday (8 October).
Smart borders is a two-tiered system of biometric scans of visiting non-EU nationals – the registered travellers programme (RTP) and the entry-exit system (EES). [...]

The privacy campaigner who successfully challenged a treaty which allowed the data of millions of European citizens to be transferred to the US has warned he may take more cases.
Max Schrems is to have his groundbreaking complaint over the alleged movement of personal information by Facebook investigated by Ireland’s online watchdog after a near three-year fight. [...]

The campaigner said watchdogs in 28 European states will now be able to accept complaints about the movement of personal information. [...]

The Obama administration has backed down in its bitter dispute with Silicon Valley over the encryption of data on iPhones and other digital devices, concluding that it is not possible to give American law enforcement and intelligence agencies access to that information without also creating an opening that China, Russia, cybercriminals and terrorists could exploit. [...]

After months of deliberation, the Obama administration has made a long-awaited decision on the thorny issue of how to deal with encrypted communications: It will not — for now — call for legislation requiring companies to decode messages for law enforcement.

MPs’ and peers’ private communications are not protected from interception by the so-called Wilson doctrine that was widely thought to provide special privileges for parliamentarians, according to a court ruling. [...]

Downing Street described the Wilson doctrine first expressed in 1966 as a political statement, without legal force, and pointed out that the intelligence agencies might be monitoring an individual who was in contact with an MP. [...]

Article that summarises the effects of the CJEU (Court of Justice of the European Union) on the Safe Harbour agreement. In particular, it points out that since the court makes appeal to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, any future agreements, in particular TTIP (TAFTA) or TISA, would have to take these into consideration.

Facebook Inc. is gearing up to fight a cascade of privacy investigations in Europe, arguing that regulators are overreaching in ways that could hurt the social network’s ability to protect users against hacking and fraud. [...]

The vast majority of Australian internet service providers (ISPs) are not ready to start collecting and storing metadata as required under the country's data retention laws which come into effect today. [...]

"The way that the legislation is drafted doesn't provide us with all of the detail about what exactly is required in all of their services.
There are a thousand different nuances that I've seen flying around as to what needs to be retained in respect of a particular service" [...]

15-year-old 'Safe Harbour' agreement between the US and EU should not stop data transfers being suspended, legal counsel says. [...]

It marks a major departure from the “Safe Harbour” data sharing agreement between the European Commission, US and Switzerland reached in 2000, with potentially far-reaching consequences. While Wednesday's statement is only a recommendation, in practice, the Advocate-General is rarely overruled by the court. [...]